Last year, the company's Microsoft Garage research division
launched the popular
Microsoft Next lockscreen for Android, which promises to
provide you enough information and control at a glance that you
don't have to unlock your phone nearly as much.

It may seem weird that Microsoft would have one lockscreen for
Google's Android, let alone two. But Microsoft Chief Experience
Officer Julie Larson-Green says it's all in the name of "[taking]
productivity to the next level" and "[keeping] you in the
moment."

The problem with the current default lockscreens on Apple,
Android, and even Windows Phone, Larson-Green says, is that
they're not at all personalized — they're just a list of alerts,
one app at a time.

The
Echo Notification Lockscreen.Google
Play

"It's a list of what apps want you to know, not necessarily
what's important to you," Larson-Green says.

This problem falls right into her role as chief experience
officer, which she has held for the year or so since Satya
Nadella came into the chief executive officer role at Microsoft
and shook things up.

A big part of Larson-Green's mandate there is to come up with new
ways for people to access their information, in ways that are
contextual and personal.

To that end, Android is a great platform for rapid
experimentation, Larson-Green says. Android has lots of users —
compared to Microsoft's 3% mobile market share — and gives
developers like Microsoft a deep access to the operating system
compared to Apple.

In other words, it's the perfect research test bed.

Echo Lockscreen has 50,729 reviews on the Google Play app store
at the time of this writing. That's a lot of feedback that can
make its way back into the product.

A lot of what Microsoft comes up with via the Next and Echo
lockscreens will make it back to Windows 10, Office, and any
other Microsoft product that sends out notifications.

Microsoft Next lockscreen.screenshot

But by handling it as a separate app first, Larson-Green says, it
means that they won't accidentally ship a half-baked or just
user-unfriendly feature to the millions of Windows users out
there.

That's especially important when dealing with Microsoft's main
revenue stream of business users.

"You buy Microsoft for your business, you want to feel good about
the products we've been building," Larson-Green says.